WE'LL GET TO HEAR 'RICKAAAAY' AGAIN :
Sid Owen & Patsy Palmer to Reprise Ricky & Bianca Roles
By Larry Jaffee
EastEnders once again is looking to its past to reinvigorate the series. Sid Owen and Patsy Palmer will be reprising their roles as Ricky and Bianca, the first time they'll be on the show together in eight years.
For readers who watch via U.S. public television stations, that means we'll see them sometime in 2013 — I'm not being facetious — if it's still on. At least we have YouTube.
To recap, their on-screen marriage imploded after Ricky found out about Bianca's affair with her mum Carol's boyfriend Dan. Bianca left Ricky for a fashion university course in Manchester, and their son Liam in his care.
We've dipped back into our archives for this issue to reprint our decade-old, exclusive interviews with Owen and Palmer).
It's not the first time Owen and Palmer have played the characters again. In 2002, they starred in a UK BBC special that picked up in Manchester nearly three years after their parting. In recent years that one-off has been used as a fund-raising tool by U.S. public television stations, which have hosted benefit screenings.
British viewers will see Ricky return to Albert Square with his new fiancee. Bianca, meanwhile, arrives as a single mother with "a gaggle of kids by different men in tow" and is struggling to survive.
"I'm over the moon they've asked me to come back," Owen was quoted as saying. "It will be interesting to see what has been happening to Ricky and Bianca Biancamust admit I'm not looking forward to her nagging me by shouting his name," he added.
Palmer said that she is "really excited about rejoining the cast and working with old friends again."
Speaking of his comeback, Owen told the Daily Star Sunday: "They know these old characters work. We've proved that in the past and, providing the storylines are strong enough, it will work. By bringing us back they are also hoping to bring back a lot of the old viewers they've lost and the strong viewing figures of the past."
It's unclear whether they'll rekindle their long-lost love affair.
"We have been promised some pretty good stories," Owen said. "And I think there will be some upsetting times ahead. The two characters will have some kind of rendezvous, that's for sure. But at this stage I don't know how far the two of them will go. There is huge chemistry and history between them so there will be a lot of drama, that much is guaranteed."
EastEnders scriptwriter Simon Ashdown, who wrote a lot of the original Ricky and Bianca material, also has been brought back to work on their storyline.
Since leaving EastEnders Owen has played a prison guard in the ITV drama Bad Girls, and he came third on the UK reality show, I'm a Celebrity! Get Me Out Of Here in 2005.
Since she left EastEnders, Palmer has co-starred in two seasons of McCready and Daughter (2000, 2001); and appeared in the miniseries, He Knew He Was Right (2004) and in Do or Die (2001).
Other favourite EE characters that have been brought back include Sharon Watts, Den Watts and Grant Mitchell. Their returns have yet to be seen on US public television screens.
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